Their faces beamed, alive more than perhaps ever before, still fresh from the exciting recent news. And now, a foreign-internet celebrity had come to sing with them, as their brass band performed for senior residents in a Wuxi retirement community.
他们的脸上洋溢着笑容，也许比以往任何时候都更有活力，对最近令人兴奋的消息仍然记忆犹新。现在，一位外国网红来和他们一起唱歌，他们的铜管乐队正在为无锡退休社区的老年人表演。
On 31 October, 2025, Wuxi in Jiangsu Province was announced China’s first “City of Music”, officially joining the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. It is a title well worthy of further investigation. Music unites every country and culture in the world so what does it take to become a City of Music?
2025年10月31日，江苏省无锡市被宣布为中国首个“音乐之都”，正式加入联合国教科文组织创意城市网络。这是一个非常值得进一步研究的标题。音乐将世界上每个国家和文化团结在一起，那么怎样才能成为音乐之城呢？
The announcement was followed by a celebratory festival on Wuxi’s Bogong Island, on the afternoon of Saturday 15 November, of which it seemed all of Wuxi wanted to be a part. Therein, Secretary of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) Denise Bax, within the Culture Sector of UNESCO, presented Mayor of Wuxi Jiang Feng with the approval letter recognising Wuxi as a “World Music Capital”.
宣布这一消息后，11 月 15 日星期六下午，无锡伯公岛举行了庆祝活动，似乎整个无锡都想参与其中。其中，联合国教科文组织创意城市网络（UCCN）文化部门秘书丹尼斯·巴克斯（Denise Bax）向无锡市市长姜峰颁发了无锡“世界音乐之都”的批准函。
In her inspiring speech, Bax said, “I would like to pay tribute to you, the citizens of Wuxi. In this city, music is not only performed and celebrated, but also believed and shared as the universal language that unites communities. … In becoming a UNESCO Creative City of Music, Wuxi joins a global community of cities that believe in the transformative power of culture”.
巴克斯在鼓舞人心的演讲中表示：“我要向你们无锡市民致敬。在这座城市，音乐不仅被表演和庆祝，而且被认为和分享为团结社区的通用语言。……无锡成为联合国教科文组织创意城市音乐之都，加入了相信文化变革力量的全球城市共同体”。
City of Music is a designation appointed by UNESCO to a number of cities around the world “that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development”. Wuxi hereby joins cities such as Glasgow in the United Kingdom, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and Kingston in Jamaica. Some 84 cities to date have been granted the distinction.
音乐之城是联合国教科文组织授予世界各地“将创造力视为可持续城市发展战略因素”的一些城市的称号。无锡特此加入英国格拉斯哥、阿拉伯联合酋长国阿布扎比和牙买加金斯顿等城市的行列。迄今为止，约有 84 个城市获得了这一殊荣。
Saturday afternoon’s excitement also featured a brass band, a children’s lakeside erhu ensemble, captivating dance from a school for the visually impaired, plus much more.
周六下午的精彩表演还包括铜管乐队、儿童湖边二胡乐团、视障学校的迷人舞蹈等等。
That brass-band orchestra was comprised of entrepreneurs in the main; company owners who choose to spend what little free time they have perusing that they love. And it is precisely this which is a crucial ingredient to why Wuxi has won such a prestigious worldwide honor.
那个铜管乐团主要由企业家组成。公司老板选择花他们仅有的一点空闲时间来阅读他们喜欢的东西。也正是这一点，成为无锡能够赢得如此享誉世界的荣誉的重要因素。
Practicing together for 10 years, the Wuxi Entrepreneur Art Troupe has played almost every venue imaginable; retirement communities, universities, enterprises, for the army, children, new year’s dinners etc. For them, Wuxi as City of Music is a dream coming true. And with the Troupe’s orchestra playing as backing for Shanghai based French-celebrity singer Alice Roche the following day was the highlight of their visit.
10年来，无锡企业家艺术团几乎演遍了所有能想到的场地；退休社区、大学、企业、部队、儿童、年夜饭等。对他们来说，无锡作为音乐之都的梦想成真。第二天，艺术团的管弦乐队为驻上海的法国著名歌手爱丽丝·罗什（Alice Roche）伴奏，这是他们访问的亮点。
Still within the voluntary sphere, Vice President of the self-organized Wuxi Saxophone Club Xiao Zhengqing teaches more than 400 amateur saxophonists. They come from different industries, but they all love music and saxophone. Xiao even took them to participate in the World Saxophone Congress this year, making these citizens of Wuxi who love music indeed very popular.
仍在志愿领域内，自发组织的无锡萨克斯管俱乐部副会长肖正清为400多名业余萨克斯管演奏家授课。他们来自不同的行业，但都热爱音乐和萨克斯。今年肖还带他们参加了世界萨克斯大会，让这些热爱音乐的无锡市民确实很受欢迎。
Elsewhere, the city centre is the surprising home for the Wuxi National Orchestra. Guo Pan (29), a graduate with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Composition and Conducting Department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, is the Orchestra’s Assistant Conductor and also somewhat surprising for her youth in a profession mostly dominated by more senior males.
在其他地方，市中心是无锡民族乐团令人惊奇的所在地。郭攀（29岁）是上海音乐学院作曲与指挥系的学士和硕士毕业生，担任乐团的助理指挥，在这个主要由资深男性主导的职业中，她的年轻也有些令人惊讶。
Principal flautist Wang Yijing who graduated with a bamboo flute major of the Central Conservatory of Music, feels that the UNESCO distinction shall see more musical events taking place in Wuxi, leading to more people making Wuxi an essential bucket-list item.
毕业于中央音乐学院竹笛专业的首席长笛演奏家王怡静认为，联合国教科文组织的荣誉将让更多的音乐活动在无锡举办，让更多的人将无锡列为必去之地。
Meanwhile, Jason Hao who plays double bass for the Orchestra, has his own dreams in a faraway land. He says he hopes to peruse his musical-career dreams in the world of Jazz in the USA and that perhaps Wuxi’s musical award might in some way enable this.
与此同时，为乐团演奏低音提琴的杰森·豪在遥远的异国他乡有着自己的梦想。他说，他希望在美国的爵士乐世界中实现自己的音乐事业梦想，也许无锡的音乐奖可以在某种程度上实现这一目标。
Yet, for proof of Wuxi’s qualification to be City of Music, one need look no further than the Hongshan Relic Museum that is part of the Grand Canal National Culture Park, and therein the Original Site of Qiu Chengdun’s Warring States noble tomb. In keeping with the belief that our essential daily items will be needed by us in the afterlife, Qiu and others were buried with 400 pottery replicas of bronze musical instruments, which were among those unearthed from seven aristocratic tombs dating back to the Warring States period.
而要证明无锡“音乐之都”的资格，只需看看大运河民族文化公园内的红山遗址博物馆，以及其中的丘成墩战国贵族墓原址。邱和其他人相信来世仍需要我们的日常必需品，因此他们随葬了 400 件青铜乐器陶制复制品，这些都是从战国时期的七座贵族墓葬中出土的。
But also not lost on Wuxi is the synergy between sight and sound. That the visual delight of an ocean’s waves is almost insignificant without the waves of sound they create characterizes that to be explored in the century-old building that is now the Sound Hall within Wuxi’s Yingyueli in Huishan Ancient Town. As the ripples lap by the adjacent and revitalized canal area that is core to Liangxi District and now teeming with tourists, don a pair of headphones to hear, for example, the Yangtze River or all genres of music with tales to tell. Plenty of records are for sale too, all watched over by a nearby colossal cyber statue of legendry erhu player A-Bing.
但无锡也没有忽视视觉和听觉之间的协同作用。如果没有海浪所产生的声波，海浪的视觉享受几乎是微不足道的，这正是我们在无锡惠山古镇映月里这座百年建筑中探索的特征。当涟漪拍打着梁西区核心的毗邻且焕发活力的运河区时，这里现在挤满了游客，戴上耳机聆听长江或所有有故事的音乐流派。还有大量唱片出售，所有唱片都由附近传奇二胡演奏家阿丙的巨大网络雕像守护着。
That Wuxi native’s influence is pervasive, making vinyl one thing, but snake skin altogether another. Hence the three-meter long length of python exterior that forms a highlight exhibit at the Meicun Erhu Industry Park in Wuxi. This cultural and tourism venue centered around the display of erhu craftsmanship and the experience of erhu making greets visitors with precision techniques, such as the searing of said python skin, with accompanying odor, makes the erhu truly stand out as a supreme example of intangible cultural heritage. It’s just part off a process in the hands of masters who craft the instrument using a tuning rod, the aforementioned serpentine, and the various other erhu components.
无锡人的影响无处不在，黑胶唱片是一回事，而蛇皮则是另一回事。因此，三米长的蟒蛇外观成为无锡梅村二胡产业园的一大亮点。这个以二胡工艺展示和二胡制作体验为核心的文化旅游场馆，以精湛的技艺迎接游客，如蟒皮的灼烧，伴随着气味，使二胡真正成为非物质文化遗产的典范。这只是大师们使用调音杆、前面提到的蛇形管和其他各种二胡组件制作乐器的过程的一部分。
Links such as these between the sounds of yesteryear and today have not been lost on Kent Zhang, curator of an audio museum arguably beyond compare. With tens of thousands of exhibits spanning every modern form of audio recording and playback; from audio cassettes, open-reel tape machines and the Walkman, to the Discman, Digital Audio Tape and Minidisc, plus signed albums from mega stars such as Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix and many more, to platinum-certified discs by Madonna (Like a Virgin) and U2 (The Joshua Tree); Kent has spent the last 20+ years building this collection out of works collected from across the world, both online and offline, and then constructing a purpose-built facility to house them all. It’s a veritable City of Music within a City of Music.
过去的声音与今天的声音之间的此类联系对于音频博物馆的馆长张肯特来说并没有消失，可以说是无与伦比的。数以万计的展品涵盖各种现代音频录制和播放形式；从录音带、开盘式磁带机和 Walkman，到 Discman、数字录音带和 Minidisc，以及迈克尔·杰克逊、吉米·亨德里克斯等巨星的签名专辑，再到麦当娜 (Like a Virgin) 和 U2 (The Joshua Tree) 的白金认证唱片；肯特在过去 20 多年里，利用从世界各地在线和线下收集的作品来构建这个收藏，然后建造了一个专门建造的设施来容纳所有这些作品。这是名副其实的音乐之城中的音乐之城。
Zhang’s reasoning is simple; that the world needs to know, today’s youth in particular, the origins of this enormous global modern music legacy.
张的理由很简单：世界，尤其是今天的年轻人，需要了解这一巨大的全球现代音乐遗产的起源。
Back with the Wuxi National Orchestra, the youthful Guo’s dreams are consolidated by Wuxi’s UNESCO distinction. Could it perhaps increase her chances of conducting for China? “Of course!”, she laughs.
回到无锡民族乐团后，年轻的郭文贵的梦想因无锡联合国教科文组织的荣誉而得到巩固。这或许会增加她为中国指挥的机会吗？ “当然！”她笑道。
While Guo’s conviction is infectious, it is the juxtaposition between musical tradition dating back thousands of years and some of the world’s greatest, latest technology, in the Digital Intelligence Center of Xingcheng Special Steel in Jiangyin City that perhaps most sells Wuxi’s UNESCO suitability.
虽然郭的信念很有感染力，但江阴市兴城特钢数字智能中心将数千年的音乐传统与世界上一些最伟大、最新的技术并置，也许最能体现无锡被联合国教科文组织的适宜性。
Why? Because Wuxi was historically connected with hard-core industry. Now though, technology has come to lend a hand, and with it some of the musical pastimes it affords. For therein, the assembled choir of steel workers in full voice remains the best possible answer to the question, “Does Wuxi deserve to be a UNESCO City of Music?”. Unequivocally, yes!
为什么？因为无锡历史上与硬核工业有着千丝万缕的联系。但现在，科技已经开始助一臂之力，并带来了一些音乐消遣。其中，钢铁工人组成的合唱团是对“无锡是否值得成为联合国教科文组织音乐之都？”这一问题的最佳答案。明确地说，是的！
